Mindfulness

Where I live, in the outer suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, we’re thrown into a state-wide lock-down…again. It’s our fourth time to be locked in our homes. This time its only 7 days but after the 111-day “stage 4” lockdown in 2020 – which rode on the back of 8 other weeks throughout the year - the effect on the population is palpable.

Besides a handful of reasons, the most of us can only leave home for 2 hours of exercise or food shopping within a 5km radius.  Most shops, restaurants and cafes …

So much of mindfulness is about paying focused attention in the given moment but, it isn’t just about paying attention but also how we pay attention.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a former medical professor known as the founding father of modern western mindfulness, created a stress and pain reduction mindfulness program - Mindfulness-Based Stressed Reduction (MBSR) - outlining attitudes that enhance the practise of mindfulness. In fact, attitudes that benefit your whole life!

Over the next couple of blog …

A major part of mindfulness is living in the moment.

Right here, right now. This moment. Nothing exists but this moment. Not striving to change anything but simply recognising and paying attention to what is going on now. Not just recognising it but paying attention to it without judging, and being compassionate with yourself about what this moment is like for you.

Whatever is here, in this moment, is enough. Even if it’s not pleasant it’s still enough.

Living in the moment is one of mindfu…

Grounding. You may have heard of it?  Well today we’re going to take a look at grounding, whether you've heard of it or not, and we'll take a closer look at why this mindful practise might be beneficial to you.

Before we do that though, let me preface this practise with...you're different. 

You don’t need anyone to tell you that you’re different, but here it goes anyway …you’re different.

I mean that in the nicest possible way. For just as you are different, I also, am different. We’…

A major part of mindfulness is giving full attention and focus, in a particular moment, to something. Sounds simple enough, right? You would think so, but a few years ago I really struggled with this very simple practise.

My mind refused to be still.

The more I tried to quiet my mind the more the chaotic thoughts raged through my mind. I’d get constant reminders to “be still” but inside I’d just be screaming “HOW??!!!!”.

The moment I would attempt to focus on any one thing my never-endi…

At first glance mindfulness seems to be just about the individual. Peace, calm and focus are the primary benefits usually promoted but, if it were only about the individual, how would that benefit others and the world around us?

Thankfully, (because I’m very passionate about the world around us!) mindfulness is also about others.

Compassion, gratitude and kindness are very important ingredients in the mindfulness mix. We’ll be looking at each of these over time but today I’m going to focus on …

Breathing, we all do it. All. The. Time. Have you ever considered though what’s happening in your body when you intentionally pause to breath slowly and deeply?

If you’re anything like me, the more you understand something and how it works the more likely you’re going to be to implement that something. That was me with deep breathing.

These past couple of weeks have been super crazy at my end. This week was the climax – several dead-lines and really long days. Then, on Tuesday, my stress level…

This past week I am really enjoying meditation focused on loving kindness of self. We all go through times that we need a bit extra TLC and well, I’ve had one of those weeks! I caught a virus (somehow, masks and all!) that left me with a head-in-a-vice headache, dizziness & sleeplessness for 11 solid days (yep, I counted), there was a massive “situation” with one of my siblings, my 83-year-old mother went in for major surgery and my youngest turned 18. You could say that it was a full-on week!

So often we might get up in the morning and just go through the motions of our morning routine. We are on “auto-pilot” not stopping to be intentional other than to maybe think of what we want in our lunch pack today as we shower, get dressed, eat our breakfast and rush out the door!

Our morning rituals are important. How we get up sets the theme for our day. On those days that I’m intentional about a mindful practise – be it meditation, a mindful walk, deep breathing or gratitude, my day flows …

I had a truly spiritual moment in the wetlands the other day. You may think this is totally weird, that I've lost my marbles, but these few moments were like a spiritual 'awakening', as much as any other I've experienced before. 

I was on my regular walk and stopped for a few minutes on the bridge that crosses a narrow river that opens out to a lake (you can see the lake in the pic above). Amazingly I found myself alone, in one of my favourite places, so decided to stop and take in the view. Th…